28 January,2010 09:01 AM IST | | Alifiya Khan
National Data Centre in Pune that provides data used as basis for weather predictions will not be in operation for another month
The National Data Centre (NDC) in Pune, the archival and record keeping section of the Indian Meteorological Department, which is the sole custodian of all climatological data collected from across the country, has been out of operation for over five weeks.
It will be another month before it becomes functional, thanks to an ongoing technological upgrade. What this means in practical terms is that if it were to rain suddenly in Mumbai, or get foggy in New Delhi, it could become difficult for aviators to decide the course of action because they can't access archival data on such situations.
Data collected by the NDC is used for predicting weather and rainfall, and is used in the aviation, agriculture, and environmental studies sectors across the nation.
"We use old NDC data to analyse and arrive at the future course of action. For example if a runway is only partially operational because of heavy fog, we access old data to decide how we should act in such a situations," said aviation expert Vipul Saxena.
"The data is accessed by many institutions and people for various purposes, predictions, and trends. We are in the middle of a technological upgrade, which is taking time. This is why services have been disrupted. We agree that many are being inconvenienced because data from the NDC isn't accessible. Our predictions of the monsoons that are based on this data has taken a backseat," said Medha Khole, director, IMD, Pune.
"Besides things like town planning, architecture and mountaineering that can ne put on hold for some time, data from the NDC is used for more immediate things like predictions of cyclical storms and fog patterns," explained Dr J R Kulkarni, a scientist at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune.
